


the truth hurts, but it sets us free

by coffeebooks



Series: a bunch of unrelated oneshots to deal with the shitty canon [1]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Feels, Fix-It of Sorts, Hopeful Ending, Identity Reveal, Sort Of, SuperCorp, lena and james are just friends, post 3x19
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 05:07:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14730542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeebooks/pseuds/coffeebooks
Summary: “Kara the longer you avoid telling her the truth, the worst it’s going to be” Alex tells her, putting a hand on her shoulder.Kara sighs tiredly.“I know” she says, looking down at her feet. She knows the implications of not telling Lena her secret and it hurts, but she cannot bear the idea of losing her best friend “But I’d rather keep my best friend a little bit longer”OrKara doesn't want to tell Lena the truth, but in the end, it is inevitable.





	the truth hurts, but it sets us free

Kara doesn’t tell Lena that she is Supergirl.

She wants to, though. She has wanted to do it for a long a time, but she is afraid. Now more than ever. She is afraid that her best friend is going to hate her, because she acted like a jerk and treated her like another Luthor.

For a long time, Kara had had to live with keeping the secret from her, while Lena continuously opened up to her and told her every secret, even the darkest ones. Lena confided in Kara, gave her her complete trust.

Now, Lena is going to believe that she withheld that secret from her because of her family, but the truth was that it it was never because of her last name.

She knows Lena is different than the rest of her family and that she would never use her secret against her. It was just that she was afraid. Afraid of losing her. Afraid of losing one of the only persons who sees her as Kara Danvers and not just as National City’s superhero.

Kara lets out a scoff as she thinks back of what Lillian once told her. That Lena would hate her when she found out she was Supergirl. Now, that fear is becoming more and more of a possible reality. She is starting to think that she was right all along.

“You should talk to her,” Alex tries to convince her once again, giving her a knowing look from her spot in Kara’s couch.

Kara flops down into the couch of her apartment, next to her sister, and lets out a tired sigh. Alex has been trying to convince her to talk to Lena for weeks, ever since they brought her to the D.E.O to interrogate her.

Looking back to that moment, Kara feels ashamed of the way she treated her, of the hurtful words she spited her way. She still remembers the way Lena's voice was shaking and how she was trying to hold back her tears. Kara feels like a jerk now for having acted the way she did.

“She knew I was DEO and not FBI and accepted that it was my secret.” Alex tells her reassuringly, “I’m sure she’ll understand.”

“No offense Alex, but it’s different because she is not your best friend!” Kara snaps, the words angrily flowing out of her mouth. She’s heard that argument before, her sister has been telling her that for days. However, she knows it's different because Lena and Alex don’t have the kind of relationship Lena and Kara have. That’s why she is so sure that Lena is going to hate her if she finds out and she can’t bare the idea of losing her.

It takes Alex aback slightly, but Kara immediately regrets yelling at her sister. Alex just looks at her, with a hint of pity in her eyes and sighs. Kara looks down at her feet once again and Alex thinks she sees a hint of tears in her blue eyes, “She feels like I betrayed her and now I feel like I did.”

“If you explain, she’ll understand you were just trying to protect yourself.” Alex says softly, trying to calm her down, and trying to make her see things rationally.

“F-from her?” Kara asks, and her voice breaks a little, “I know she’ll never hurt me, Alex, I don't need protection from her, but now she’s going to think I kept this because she is a Luthor.”

Kara is now on the verge of tears and Alex notices it. It suprises her and unsettles her a little bit, because she hasn’t seen her sister in that state of vulnerability since what happened with Mon-El. “Sure, she’ll probably be mad but I’m sure she’ll understand. She’s like the smartest person on this planet.”

Kara lets out a wet chuckle at that. She knows her sister is trying to cheer her up, but it doesn't work though. She still feels awful.

“Y-you know, she told me James never broke into her vaults.” Kara says, taking a deep breath. Her voice breaking a little more with every word she lets out . Her eyes are swelling up and she is having a hard time keeping it together. “James has known her for less than I have, and he trusted her enough not to do it. I know she’d never hurt me, and yet my single-minded fear of kryptonite didn't allow me to see that.”

Alex sighs once again.

“Kara the longer you avoid telling her the truth, the worst it’s going to be,” Alex tells her, putting a hand on her shoulder.

Kara sighs tiredly.

“I know,” she says, looking down at her feet. She knows the implications of not telling Lena her secret and it hurts, but she cannot bear the idea of losing her best friend, “But I’d rather keep my best friend a little bit longer.”

\\\

Kara doesn’t tell her she is Supergirl, even if has multiple occasions in which she can finally come clean and tell her. As they work on a cure for Reign in the DEO, during lunch breaks at L-Corp, at work in Catco and in many other mundane occasions where there is just the two of them.

However, she never manages to draw the courage to do it.

It takes one look at her best friend’s smile for her heart to shatter, because she can’t imagine a life in which she doesn’t get to see that smile anymore.

She can’t imagine a world without her, because she is in love with her.

She has been in love with her for a long time now, but that’s another can of worms and she is not willing to open it just yet, because acknowledging her feelings for her was supposed to be freeing, but instead she feels trapped. Trapped between her secret and her feelings.

She is not ready to tell her that.

“Are you okay, Kara?” Lena asks gently as she puts her hand on her shoulder, sending shivers all around her body.

Kara briefly looks at her best friend and fights the urge to break down into tears and to wrap her arms around her and never let go. The tenderness in Lena’s voice breaks her a little bit with each word, because she feels like she doesn’t deserve her. Like it is all a lie and when Lena finds out she’s been lying to her, she will be be devastated that Kara was just another person in her life that betrayed her.

“I’m great!” she says, trying to mask her pain with a smile. Her voice is a little too loud for her to be ‘ _great_ ’ and Lena looks like she doesn’t believe her, but she lets it go. “Just hungry.”

Lena chuckles and Kara’s heart warms up a little bit at the sound of that. She had missed her so much, missed her laugh and her smile.

“Of course you are hungry,” the smile in Lena’s face is everything she needs in that moment. The reassurance that she can’t lose that.

 _Yes,_ Kara decides in that moment, _she’ll never tell her._

She'll never tell her because she’d rather have a little bit of Lena than not have any. For the first time in her life, she wants to be selfish. To keep her secret in order to keep her best friend.

\\\

Kara doesn’t want to tell her because she notices the differences and it feels like it's like a paradox, the way Lena speaks to Kara and the way she now speaks to Supergirl.

With Kara, she is full of tenderness and caring. It's warm, almost like the sunlight that Kara loves to bask in every morning. Lena comes to Catco and brightens up the moment she sees Kara and talks to her so softly, so genuinely happy to be near her, that it breaks Kara a little more every time they see eachother.

With Supergirl, on the other hand, it’s just coldness and professionalism. It makes Kara cringe, how awkward things have become between them. She’s heard Lena talk with business partners at L-Corp before and the sharpness in her voice can’t even begin to compare with the tone she uses when she addresses her alter ego now. It’s full of tension.

“I don’t like this tension between us, Lena,” she tells her as she tries to start a conversation with her in order to apologize. “And I know it’s my fault.” She hopes that if she apologizes, Lena would give another chance. She tells her how terrible she feels about what she asked James to do, that she is sorry that she tried to use one of Lena's few friends to spy on her. It was uncalled for and she knows it. “I just don’t want one mistake to ruin our friendship, that’s all,” she says, sounding almost defeated.

“It won’t.”

“Good.”

“We don’t have a friendship, Supergirl.”

It hurts, it hurts so freaking much and the longer they keep this conversation, the further away she feels Lena.

Kara's voice breaks as she tells her she hopes they can work to rebuild their trust, because she really hopes they can, even if it means starting over. However, Lena is stubborn and she doesn't relent.

“Why is it so important to you that we are friends?!” Lena asks suddenly, sharpness in her voice as she directs a glare at Kara.

 _Because I can’t lose you,_ That’s what Kara really wants to say.

She wants to say that she loves her and that she is afraid of losing her, but those words don’t come out of her mouth.

Excuses and reasons build up in her tongue, but she is unable to say anything at all. Nothing comes out from her in that moment. In that instant, she only manages to look at her best friend trying to mask how hurt she is.

“I have friends Supergirl, friends that don’t scheme behind my back or lie.” she says and Kara's heart lurches, pain clear in her features. Lena’s words hurt, and ironically, it feels like kryptonite piercing her skin. It shows in her face, but she can’t do anything to stop it. Maybe she deserves it, deserves to feel like that because of the way she treated her. What hurts the most is knowing that Lena considers Kara one of those friends that are always truthful to her. If she ever finds out she is Supergirl, she’ll hate her forever. “They also know that I’d never enter a friendship with someone who has already breached that trust,” she adds and Kara's mouth thins.

“Understood.”

And it's like that last hope she held, goes away with a word.

\\\

Kara doesn’t want to tell her, but in the end the truth comes out on its own.

She is forced to reveal herself when she is outed and it is messy and painful. Kara splutters her apologies in between sobs and Lena can barely hold back her feelings, her voice breaks and her eyes well up in tears. The look of hurt and betrayal in Lena’s eyes scares Kara, freezes her. It frightens her because she can feel that this is the moment she loses her.

 _This is it,_ she thinks _._ This is the moment Lena finally tells her she hates her, and she loses her forever.

“I’m so sorry Lena,” she says, not being able to look at her in the eyes, “I never meant to lie to you. I wanted to tell you.”

“Then why didn’t you?” she asks, clearly hurt. Her tone is sharp and gone is the soft and tender Lena she is used to.

“The more I kept the secret, the more I was afraid of the outcome,” she admits, gulping hardly. Her eyes tear up, but she tries to keep her composure and to keep her voice from breaking the way her heart is, “I’m so sorry for keeping this from you.”

Lena looks at her in disbelief as she wipes out the tears that are rolling down her eyes. “Kara, it isn’t even about your secret,” she tells her, angrily. “It’s about the fact that you are my best friend and still treated me as if I was a national threat. It’s about the fact that despite being my best friend, you back stabbed and used a mutual friend to spy on me because you didn’t believe me when I told you I didn’t have more kryptonite!” Lena snaps and Kara cringes as she listens to Lena’s hurtful words.

Lena is angry and hurt and Kara understands, because she screwed up. However, that doesn’t make it easier because every hurtful word stabs her heart.

In the end, Lena breaks down first and falls to her pristine couch, covering her face with her hands as she lets the tears of pain fall. It takes one look at her for Kara to finally lose her composure as well.

Her hands itch to touch her, to wrap her into a tight hug and never let her go, but she can’t. She is unable to move, too overwhelmed by her own heartbreak and her feelings of guilt.

She had been so single-minded about kryptonite that she failed to realize that trust was a two-way street. She had been so focused on finding out if Lena was betraying her that she didn’t begin to think that it was her that betrayed her trust first.

“In the end it was because I’m a Luthor, wasn’t it?” she asks, anger and sadness lacing her voice, as she lets out a defeated sigh. It's almost like she is used to the people in her life treating her like just another Luthor, like it's something that shouldn't surprise her and it breaks Kara even more to know that she's the reason she feels that way again. Lena crosses her arms in front of her then, almost as if putting that distance between them can keep her from breaking even more, as if it can protect her heart for getting hurt.

“No!” Kara immediately tells her. “It’s because…”

Kara hesitates and stops mid-sentence because she doesn’t know if she can continue talking. She may have admitted her feelings to herself but opening up to Lena is different. It’s not even another can of worms that she isn’t willing to open like she once thought. It’s a pandora box and once she opens it, it will be uncontainable and she isn’t sure if she is ready for the consequences.

“Because of what, Supergirl?” Lena says her name with so much anger that Kara cringes once again and feels her heart breaking all over again. She doesn’t know if she can take it.

Wherever she is now, Lillian Luthor might me cackling and celebrating that she was right. Lena finally hates her. And it’s all on her.

Kara then sighs and just looks at Lena with sadness in her eyes, hoping to convery how sorry she is. However, she can't take it anymore. She can't stand hiding more secrets from her, “Because I was taught since I was a kid that I had to hide my secret and protect it. Because I’m an alien and at first, I was afraid to come out and afraid that you’d see me differently. Because I was afraid that knowing my secret would put you in danger and because when I finally gathered the courage to tell you, it was too late. The more I waited, the worst it was, to the point that you’d feel I had betrayed our friendship!” She sputters all the reasons she can come up with so suddenly that it's like a word vomit.

Deep down, she hopes that it is enough for Lena to understand. To understand that it was never because she is a Luthor, that there were probably a hundred of reasons why she didn’t tell her, but it was never because she didn’t trust her.

She pauses and looks at her intently, before she finally spills the final piece information regarding her secret. “And most importantly because I love you! I love you and I was afraid of losing you” she snaps, tears filling her eyes as Lena looks at her shocked and speechless “Because losing you would feel like losing krypton all over again.” She says the last thing in a whisper and Lena looks at her in disbelief.

Kara fears that in that moment, she might walk away. That what she feared the most was going to become reality. That despite the fact that she told she loves her, she'll still walk away from her.

Lena opens her mouth to speak again, but before she can manage to say anything Kara is kissing her, hardly. Her hands travel up to her face and cups her jaw gently. They are shaking and unsteady, but she manages to hold onto her firmly. For an instant, it’s like time stops. Lena’s lips are soft against hers and she feels as if her heart might come out any second. Kara kisses her with intent and with passion, hoping to convey all her feelings in that kiss.She knows Lena is shocked from the way she just stands still, without moving an inch. Kara feels a tug of pain in her heart for an instant.

_Rejection._

It hurts more like kryptonite.

However, when she starts to consider pulling away dejectedly, she feels it. Her heart swells up with hope when she finally feels Lena’s lips moving against hers and it’s everything she ever dreamed of. Even better.

Kara can taste the saltiness of tears in her mouth and she doesn’t know whether it’s her that is crying or if it’s Lena. Maybe it’s the both of them. All she knows is that she doesn’t want that moment to end, but no matter how much she hopes; the moment ends anyway.

Lena pulls away, wiping the tears from her eyes. She is flushed and a little out of breath and it makes Kara heat up, knowing that she is the reason she is like that.

“You love me?” she asks, almost with mockery and it hurts Kara because it sounds as if Lena wouldn’t believe it. That after everything Kara’s done, it is impossible for her to love her like she says she does.

“Yes! I love you Lena, it’s the only thing she manages to say as tears roll down her eyes, hoping that the determination in her voice can be enough for her to see that she is telling her the truth. “And I’m sorry.”

“You say you love me, yet you still thought I was capable of using kryptonite against you,” Lena spats with so much anger, it stabs Kara in the heart. Lena’s eyes are swelling up again and Kara almost starts regretting every decision she ever made in her life because she cannot bear the idea of Lena thinking that she’d believe she would use kryptonite against her.

“No! I wasn’t afraid of what you could do with it. I was afraid of what could happen if it got in the wrong hands,” she explains, but still it looks like Lena doesn’t believe her. She looks at her sharply and Kara doesn't know what else to say.

Lena has put a distance between them as they spoke and Kara tentatively tries to break it, by walking a little closer. Lena notices but doesn’t move away, which is something. Kara looks at her and sighs “Knowing that you are smart enough to create kryptonite was a scary thought, because they could have used you against me and I’d die before I let someone hurt you.”

Lena looks at Kara in that moment, death silent, and Kara suddenly feels as if she cannot breathe.

“I love you too, Kara,” she says, almost in a whisper, and it freezes Kara in her spot. She doesn’t expect it, didn't think it was even a possibility. She was too preoccupied thinking about making things right with Lena, that she didn’t consider thinking that she hadn’t said it back. She doesn’t have time to celebrate the fact that Lena loves her back and just told her that, because Lena is still looking at her in that same way. In a way that tells her that she’s hurt her deeply and there is no excuse. “And I would have never used my intelligence to harm you in anyway. I did what I did to save Sam.”

“I know!” she tries to explain, tries to make it better, but Lena raises her hand slightly to stop her from talking. That is enough for Kara to stop.

“What you did hurt me deeply, Kara.” she says, taking time to recompose herself. She is overwhelmed with feelings and Kara understands, because she is too. “It hurt because I love you and yet you still thought I was capable of hurting you.”

Lena doesn’t seem capable of facing Kara without tearing up once again, so she turns around, giving her her back. She is looking out of her balcony into the National City’s night sky and Kara follows her gaze. The view outside is beautiful and calming and it reminds Kara of all the times she has come into Lena's office through that same balcony. She hopes it is not the last one. 

Even if she is not facing her, Lena still wraps her arms around herself as if to protect herself. Kara is still overwhelmed and all she manages to do is to focus on Lena’s heartbeat. Her heart is beating like crazy, but somehow it manages to calm Kara’s nerves down a little bit. Focusing on her heart makes her realize that it is real and that Lena is still there. 

“I said a lot of things I didn’t mean in the heat of the moment,” she says, much calmer now. Kara looks at the woman she loves and stops fighting her desire to wrap her arms around her. “I’m so sorry, Lena.”

She just walks closer towards her and finally wraps her arms around her waist, pulling her as close as she can. Kara’s heart settles at the contact, while Lena’s heart goes crazy. It still surprises her, how the two of them are two sides of the same coin. As she feels Kara's arms around her, she jumps a little, startled by the sudden contact, but doesn’t push her away.

It gives Kara hope, so she continues speaking. “I know that the only way you could hurt me is by breaking my heart, because it is yours, Lena” Kara says, tightening her hold against her and resting her chin on her shoulder. Lena lets out a sigh and moves a little and Kara fears that she might push her away, but Lena just settles comfortably against Kara’s arms, placing her hands on Kara’s arms.

Kara’s heart swells up with warmth and happiness, and she manages to smile for the first time in weeks. Lena finally uncoils and relaxes against her embrace

“Kara, I’m still hurt about what happened,” she tells her and it sends a pang of pain and guilt to Kara’s heart once again. She lets out a sigh. “But I guess I understand.”

Lena pulls away but doesn’t let go. She turns, finally able to face her, and places her hands on Kara’s chest, just above Supergirl’s crest.

“When this is all over…” she starts, with a hint of hesitation in her voice and with fear of being rejected once again, like when they spoke in the DEO labs. “Can we talk this through?”

It takes Lena a while to answer and Kara bits her lips in anxiety. 

“I’d really like that,” Lena says softly and Kara lets out the breath she's been holding back and smiles, pulling Lena into another hug. Lena rests her head against Kara’s chest “After we save Sam, we will talk.”

“I’ll tell you everything you want to know,” she says, tightening her embrace against Lena’s form. “And I promise, there'll be no more secrets and lies.”

“That’s all I’m asking for.” she mumbles. They stay like that in a comfortable silence, before Lena speaks again “And I’m sorry too by the way, for not telling you about the kryptonite.” The sincerity in Lena's voice makes her heart warm up. 

“I understand you didn’t tell me because you were afraid of how I’d react,” she says. It hurts, to bring back this issue after it seems like they have put it behind. However, Kara knows she has to say it. “After how I acted like a jerk, I cannot judge you for not telling me.”

“That’s right.” she says and Kara chuckles

Kara rests her head against Lena’s and she finally manages to breathe again. Because she can finally see light at the end of the tunnel. It’s not forgiveness yet, but it is a huge step into it. Kara holds her tight and promises herself she’ll make it better.

She doesn’t regret finally telling her, because in the end, she doesn’t lose her.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this because the 3x19 angst broke me.  
> Hope you enjoy!


End file.
